Then Ben seized his hat and went out, leaving the thunderbolt which had thus shaken him,--Mrs. Barton’s little bill,--lying on the table. He had no need to look at it. Its crooked column of shillings was quite as appalling to him as if it had been hundreds of pounds, for he had not a penny, so to speak. He had some five-and-twenty shillings in the world; and when a man has come to that, the mere amount of what he owes does not much matter to him. Small or great, it involved the same impossibility,--he had nothing wherewith to pay it. The evening had come on,--a May evening,--with a little fresh wind blowing, and a scent of growing grass and fresh foliage even in the dingiest of squares. London had revolved upon its axis since he had gone to Guildford Street. Even in that sombre neighbourhood the thrill of the new season was in everybody’s veins; the tall dark houses round the corner, which had slumbered all winter, had now lights gleaming all over them. The old fly with the white horse, and the driver in white cotton gloves, which Ben had caught a vision of through the window the first time he entered that house and met his fate, drove past him now as he went out, with a semblance of dash and spirit, conveying ladies in full dress to some dinner-party. Six months,--and had he been slumbering, too, and had dreams?--or taking the most important step of his life, laying a sweet foundation for after happiness?--or throwing away so much time, and his peace into the bargain? Heaven knows! He went out and made his way through the twilight streets into the Park, where the dew was falling and the stars shining. Even yet he had not come to ask himself seriously the question, What was he to do? His mind was in a haze of excitement, and uncertainty, and passion. It was like the evening landscape amidst which he went abroad,--lights gleaming about all its edges,--vague noises,--a haze about that blurred the distant outlines,--calm with the compulsory quiet which comes with an ending, whatever that ending may be,--yet agitated with fears and hopes and uncertain resolutions. There was the faint fragrance of the spring, and the soft sadness of the night, and the mystery of that indistinct hum and roar of the great city, so near yet so unseen! All this was round about Ben as he walked, and it was but a shadow of the commotion, the silence, the despair and excitement, that were in his heart.